Chapter 340 |
Rules Written in Blood (6)
"I am the lord of this city.
Whether I am the first, the second, or the hundredth sacrifice, I cannot say. But regardless, I am here.
I do not know who will read this journal. I do not know whether you find yourself in the same situation as I. But if you do... I hope this journal helps you.
For this is a set of rules written in the blood of one hundred thousand.
First, one thing.
In this city, periodic dismantling and reassembly takes place. The 'dismantling' I speak of is literal. Buildings are broken apart piece by piece and put back together. Which district will be dismantled cannot be predicted. No pattern can be found.
This city is divided into twenty-seven districts. All of them, except the first district where the lord's manor stands, are exposed to the risk of dismantling.
There is no knowing when or where dismantling will strike.
Here, 'records' does not mean writing alone. Paintings, markings, sheet music, lines scratched into floors, anything bearing the intent to convey information disappears entirely.
When I realized that, I knew instinctively.
The countless records I had left for those who would fall here after me were meaningless. The moment the lord's manor, the moment I myself, was dismantled, all the information I had left would become worthless.
That is a truly horrifying thing.
I know I will never escape this city. I have accepted that. But to leave nothing behind? I could not bring myself to accept the fact that I would not leave a single trace proving that I, as a person, had ever existed.
So I tried.
I searched for a way to leave records behind.
With the help of many people, I attempted many methods, and there were many failures. I will not write about those failures. I will only state this: over the past ten years, seventy-two thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight people died without leaving a single record.
The seventy-two thousand, seven hundred and twenty-ninth.
A priest came to this city.
He was the turning point.
On the verge of giving up after finding no answer whatsoever, I received his counsel. He was a priest of the Holy Radiance Order, and one who had spent long years studying Star Theology.
He said that what built this city was likely a Constellation, and that because one's existence was erased by a Constellation's Authority, records could not be left behind.
Then, I asked.
How could one resist that Authority?
The priest answered like this.
"What resists a star is another star. A Sacred Object that holds starlight can resist a star's Authority."
"And how does one make such a Sacred Object?"
"You allow starlight to dwell in something you consider special. A star is, at its core, will, and intense will is often described as starlight. Even a person's will holds a faint trace of starlight, so you make use of that."
"Is that possible?"
"There have been cases where a crucifix carried by a priest who spent a lifetime in prayer became a Sacred Object. So it is not entirely impossible."
In short, it was a suggestion to bet on chance, luck, and miracles. The me from before, from my days as a civil official outside, would have let that go in one ear and out the other.
But not now.
I researched what that 'will' truly was. The priest helped me. He could feel and see the force called 'starlight.' Relying on his eyes, I researched how to place starlight into objects.
I researched, and researched again.
What the priest and I discovered was that a person's will could, laughably, be amplified through quite simple means.
Pain, blood, and screaming.
I tormented myself. I tore out my fingernails and cut into my own flesh, and soaked a single book in my own blood.
Sometimes cursing the Constellation that had thrown me into this city. Sometimes out of pity for whoever would sit in this place after me. Sometimes, sometimes......
Several years passed.
When the Sacred Object was nearing completion, the priest told me that starlight had indeed come to dwell in this book, but it was still too faint.
"Allow me to handle the last part."
The priest who said that cut his own throat. He let the flowing blood soak the book. The priest who had always said suicide was the gravest sin took his own life in his final moment.
He, who had spoken of the beauty of stars, spoke of nothing but hatred and resentment for them at the end. Frothing blood, he cursed the stars.
Was the book completed by his curse? I cannot say.
But I believe it was completed.
Priest Kalbert.
I use this space to thank him.
If heaven exists, I believe God would gladly set aside a place there for him. I pray that he found rest in it.
Whether this book was completed by his sacrifice and by my blood, I do not know. Whether this book can resist a Constellation's Authority, I likewise do not know. Perhaps all the effort of these past years was meaningless.
Out of fear of confirming that, I did not test it. I no longer had the time or the passion to make a new attempt, should it have proven a failure.
...
......
......The range dismantled at one time is growing wider. The intervals are growing shorter as well. Five districts were dismantled at once. The next day it was twelve, and the day after that......
Last night, every district except the lord's manor was dismantled.
I am certain I am next. Now that death draws near, I look back on my life. Was my life here, unable to find a way out of this city, meaningless?
Was all this effort worthless?
I cannot say.
Yet even so, I believe it had meaning.
This is the trace of one person who struggled.
If you are reading these words, it will mean my attempt succeeded. I pray that it has.
Below are things I learned while governing this city as its lord. May this information be of help to you. And I pray with all my heart that you, who reads these words, will find a way out of this city.
May my life have meaning for you.
- Written by Torres."
2.
"- Written by Torres."
"......"
Najin and Yuel turned the journal's pages in silence.
The book in Yuel's hands had bloodstains pressed hard into it. Bloodstains that had not flaked away despite the long years, stiff and dried, having become part of the book itself.
And those bloodstains unmistakably held starlight.
It was starlight paltry compared to that of Transcendents like Najin or Yuel. A tiny, insufficient glow, too small to form a single star. That a person who never gained a single star had managed to imbue an object with starlight was clearly a feat worth acknowledging, but......
'It's not enough.'
Najin knew. He was a Transcendent, and one who had been resisting a Transcendent's Authority.
This was not enough.
It might resist a Transcendent's Authority a few times, with luck. But put another way, that was all. With only the faint starlight left in those bloodstains, this book could not become a Sacred Object.
'That's clearly true. So why...'
Why did this book appear to him as a Sacred Object?
"......It hasn't ended yet."
"Pardon?"
"There are many pages left in the journal."
Yuel pointed to the remaining pages. They had only confirmed the front portion; far more pages remained unread.
A brief exchange of glances, and then Yuel turned the page.
At that moment, something changed. The instant Yuel's fingers touched the bloodstains, as she moved to turn to the next page, the book gleamed with starlight.
"Oh."
The starlight Yuel possessed and the starlight the book held responded to each other. The starlight flowing from her body mingled with the starlight dwelling in the book, and from that mingling, the starlight took on form.
"......"
Someone was sitting in the lord's chambers.
It was a vision. Nothing more than a past person reproduced in starlight. A middle-aged man of unknown era, a single book in his hands.
He hid the book in a corner of the lord's chambers and closed his eyes. He pressed his hands together in prayer. Then his body turned to dust and scattered.
Dismantled.
Najin knew instinctively that this middle-aged man was Torres, the book's owner. After Torres was dismantled, a little time passed, and a new apparition appeared in the corner of the lord's chambers. This one was different from Torres.
Where Torres had been slight of build, this was a young man with a sturdy frame. He wandered around the room and stopped before a cabinet. He stared at it, tilted his head, then touched it as if drawn by something he couldn't name.
And so, by chance, he discovered the book.
The moment he opened it, Yuel's fingers moved too. She followed him and turned to the same page. The young man sat for a while reading, and his expression slowly twisted.
"I have read what the person above has written.
I do not know whether I am the one directly after that person, but I too am someone who has fallen into this city. And somehow I have come to be its lord.
The information you left behind was helpful.
I will set escape as my goal. There is much left undone outside, and I would rather not end my life in this place."
Letters began appearing in the journal.
The form of the young man sitting there also began to change.
"Method 1, attempted.
Failed.
Method 2, attempted.
Failed.
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 27, 41, 117......
Failed."
The young man's face, which had looked full of energy, began to harden. The lines on his face deepened. The gentle young man shouted at someone, clutched his own head and groaned.
"1,152nd attempt.
Failed."
He wrote down every method he had tried, then stared at the book with hollow eyes. Then he took his own life. The blood of the young man, now middle-aged, soaked the book.
His form was dismantled. Hermann's experiment ended, and the next one began.
The next to appear in the lord's chambers was a young woman. She too found the book by chance. She opened it, read through all the entries, and let out a hollow laugh.
"There is no way to escape.
There is no way to resist.
A being far above in that distant sky has determined our fate. A being transcendent enough to be called a god has determined our fate, so what is there that we can do?
My child died at a single gesture from a Transcendent. My friend died. My companions vanished without a trace. Struggling in this world is meaningless.
Worthless and meaningless."
She wrote those words and left the lord's chambers. Time passed. Even as it wound by quickly, a good while elapsed before the woman returned.
The woman who had looked to be around thirty when she first sat there now looked past fifty. Middle-aged now, she opened the journal without a word.
"In all the years since, I have watched ants.
Even in a world made by a Transcendent, insects still exist. Small ants clung to the buildings and gnawed at their foundations. For long years I observed those ants.
A year, two years, ten years, the ants kept gnawing steadily at the pillars. And at last they brought one building down.
......
Even those tiny ants brought down a building thousands, tens of thousands of times their own size.
Then what am I? Am I something lesser even than those insects? Perhaps so.
So let me at least become an insect.
Being something that barely qualifies as an insect is surely better than being something worse than one. Below is what I learned through twenty-three years of enduring this city.
May this information carve even a small crack in it."
Her form was dismantled. Yuel turned the next page without a word. Each time she turned a page, a new person's form appeared and then vanished again.
"What the hell am I supposed to do?
Can't escape. Can't hold on. Everyone just curses at me. What, exactly, am I supposed to do?"
Not everyone left something meaningful. Some hurled the book across the room in a rage, screamed, and hanged themselves.
"I gave it everything I had.
Seems it was meaningless after all."
Others were killed by those who forced their way into the lord's chambers.
"That Sacred Object thing, doesn't it just mean that as long as you have strong enough obsession, you can complete it?
I'm not clever enough to leave special information like the others. So I'll do what I can.
I tormented myself every day. Sometimes I dragged in prisoners and tormented them too, getting their blood on it as well.
Hope it helps."
And still others chose to strengthen the starlight dwelling in the book. So the book passed on to the next lord, and the next after that.
"I am a scholar who studied astronomy on the outside.
Observing the night sky, I began to see patterns. Every time those stars moved, changes occurred in the city.
In my time, the dismantling and reassembly the earlier lords described does not occur, but other problems arise. Whatever the case, it is clear those events are connected to the movements of the stars above.
I will leave behind a method for reading the stars."
The astronomer left a method for reading the stars, and for connecting them to events occurring within the city.
"Ah... I don't think I'll be able to write anything as impressive as those who came before me. Still, if I write what I know, it would be about farming.
Farming is possible even in this city, it seems.
Below are the methods I tried.
Food does fall from the sky, just enough that no one starves, but people still need vegetables."
One farmer left a way to grow crops.
"I was a judge.
This city needs laws, it seemed to me. I've laid the bare framework at least; I hope someone will build on it."
Another, a judge, left the foundations of law.
"I." "As for me." "This person." "I, your humble." "Whether it will help or not." "Even a little." "For now." "The methods I attempted are as follows." "This." "It seems." "I'm not sure, but still." "But."
Countless people touched the journal and passed through. Countless lords stayed in the lord's chambers and disappeared. Some left something behind. Some poured out their anguish. Some built new discoveries on the foundations of what had been left. Some made mistakes, and those errors were corrected only after several more turns.
Vast amounts of information gathered, were sifted, were discovered, and through that long succession of steps, the rules began to take shape.
Rules to be followed, a code of conduct.
And laws written by hand, rules written in blood.
How to survive in this city. How to read the intentions of the stars. How to escape dismantling. Advice useful for carrying out the duties of a lord.
And so the Rules Written in Blood were written.
"I am an ordinary person."
The next young man to inherit the journal read through the rules.
He turned the pages with a complicated expression.
"I have no special abilities. I hold no great convictions. I am simply an ordinary person who wants to stay alive as long as possible.
Which is to say, I did not take the lord's seat because I had some special goal like the others. In trying to survive as long as I could, I wandered in search of the safest place I could find, and ended up here."
He let out a groan.
"Because of that, I feel ashamed.
Reading this journal, I find myself envious.
Everyone is trying to leave something behind, but I have nothing in particular worth leaving.
Should I pass this on to someone else?"
He pulled a coin from his pocket and held it up. He rolled it across his palm, then flicked it with his thumb.
"Heads, I step down from this position.
Tails, I take on the role of lord."
The coin came up tails. And so the young man accepted the position of lord. From then on, whenever a moment of choice arose, he flipped the coin. He trusted his luck and entrusted his fate to it.
The young man survived for a long, long time.
That young man who had survived so long, who should now be called middle-aged, looked at the worn coin in his hand. Then he wrote in the journal.
"Reading through all the information written here, one question has come to me. It is a problem the earlier writers called an 'unsolvable riddle,' but perhaps I am the one who can solve it.
It will require a challenge, though.
My body trembles at the thought. I am afraid. Whether I succeed or fail, I will surely die.
The odds of success are slim.
I will likely fail.
It is a foolish thing to do.
It is not the sort of thing someone who wants to live a long life would do. But why is it that I feel I must attempt it anyway? Reading through this journal, it seems I have gone a little mad too."
The young man, now middle-aged, gave a small laugh.
"Heads, I attempt it.
Tails, I do not."
He threw the coin high. Older now, he could not catch it as easily as he had when young. The trembling of his fear-stricken hands likely played a part as well.
Thunk.
The coin bounced off the back of his hand, struck the desk, and fell to the floor.
To a spot he could not see from where he sat.
He did not move from his seat. He sat there for a long while, then picked up his quill. Without checking the coin, he wrote a single line in the journal.
"Heads."
He closed the journal, returned it to where it had been, and stood. He took his coat from the wall and prepared to go out. As he gathered his things one last time, he happened to glance at the coin on the floor.
It was tails.
Without a word, he picked up the coin and set it on the desk face up. Then he left the lord's chambers. His hands no longer trembled.
What he did after that, no one could say.
But one thing was clear: the moment he left the lord's chambers, the entire city shook. Something had changed because of him.
"......"
Yuel turned to the next page.
The journal was nearly done now. This was likely the last entry. The moment she turned to that final page, an apparition appeared in the lord's chambers.
"Oh."
Yuel's lips parted.
Her gaze, which had been fixed on the journal, was now locked on the apparition standing in the lord's chambers. Yuel's eyes wavered.
It could not have been otherwise.
The apparition now appearing in the lord's chambers was the one who had taken Yuel in when she fell into this city, and the one who had entrusted Yuel with what came next. Her godfather.
The Korean source uses two homophones for the word 수칙 in a deliberate pun: 守則 (rules to be followed; a code of conduct) and 手則 (laws written by hand). Both are pronounced "su-chik." The title 피로 쓰인 수칙 plays on this wordplay, the rules are written by hand and in blood, and are rules one must follow. The Hanja have been translated into their English meanings rather than left untranslated.